


To have, to hold.

by withoutwords



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Character Study, F/M, Infidelity, Katie's not dead, M/M, ambiguously happy? ending, strong mature rating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 09:57:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3763819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutwords/pseuds/withoutwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(That was his first taste of victory.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To have, to hold.

**Author's Note:**

> This a character study of Robert, of sorts, but still very heavy on the Robron. I’m not Robert’s biggest fan, but I find the character perversely interesting, and just wanted to play in his head a little bit. 
> 
> This story is set in some fantastical AU in which Robert still gets married, Aaron’s still in love with him, but Katie never found out and apparently gave up her tirade. Huzzah! Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy :)

As a boy, Robert was given a small, wooden model aeroplane in a special leather pouch. A delicate, complex thing that took him the better part of a month to assemble because he refused to let anyone help him. It was _his_ ; his plane and his work and his joy when it was done. His joy when it _worked_ , when it soared perfectly through the nothingness of air.

(That was his first taste of victory.)

Robert got older, but life went on the same. This piece here, and that part there, and he messed up. Once, twice, the count’s so high now he doesn’t bother any more. There is no secret to happiness; people just don’t want to know. You can have happiness you just have to be willing to live with your choices.

Robert can.

“Where’s Mrs. Robert Sugden tonight?” Aaron asks, and Robert looks at his watch. 

“Asleep, I’d expect,” Robert says, inspecting the rat hole motel room Aaron text him directions to, then letting himself inspect Aaron. He’s slouched on the edge of the bed, no tie, his shirt untucked and a little bit of belly peeking through. He’s ready and he’s unravelling, unravelling for Robert as always. “You want me to send your regards?”

“Mate,” Aaron huffs, as Robert bridges the gap and gets to his knees, invading the space beside Aaron with hands and arms and shoulders. “You don’t care what I want, you made that pretty clear.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Hmm, I donno,” Aaron says, and he’s so close Robert can see the speck of colour in his eyes, can smell the thick odour of beer on his breath. He looks high, reckless, playing at Robert’s belt. “Let’s see what marriage ‘s done to this.”

*

The first man was Tim, at 21. A short, weedy bloke with no backbone and the quickest fuck Robert ever had - his sex notwithstanding. The next was Mark, at 22, a school teacher with 3 kids and denial so thick he made Robert look like a gay rights advocate. Then Paul, or Peter or something, then some redhead from a club with a spectacular cock - every year another man, or two, each less distinct and easier to forget.

Robert liked to have sex with men. He didn’t love them.

He loves Chrissie, loves having her, and fitting into _this model_. This flight plan.

“Robert,” Aaron says, gasps, his knee at Robert’s shoulder while Robert fucks into him. When his head rolls back his neck’s exposed, thick tendons of muscle and skin to bite, all that hair so thick and warm to bury his face into. “Robert, _need_ , need you.” 

Robert grunts, groans, and bottoms out and the sudden pain of Aaron’s blunt nails in his back make him push again too soon, like a roll of thunder through both of them and where they connect. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Robert says, drawing out slow and finding their rhythm, revelling in the way Aaron hisses and tenses and keens. “I’m here.”

“You don’t love me,” Aaron is mumbling, and he’s matter of fact; his eyes are closed and he’s _grinning_. Like he knows something Robert doesn’t. “But you love this, don’t you, love that I _need_ you.”

Robert growls and picks up the pace and if it starts to hurt, just a little, he’s not sure who he’s punishing.

*

Chrissie was his first love, after Katie. He hates Katie now (the bones in his fingers constricting every time he sees her face) but he didn’t once, didn’t know how for a really long time. He won her, she belonged to him, and he’s so livid that it didn’t matter – that she left him, once and again, left him for all his pitfalls and all the things he couldn’t be, stacked up to Andy.

(Robert Sugden, this is your life.)

Katie, Katie’s just nothing now, just a woman trying to meddle in his life when she chose not to be in it in the first place. _Chrissie_ , Chrissie was the first woman who saw him anew. Not the small town man, swimming in grease and pig-shit to afford a nice suit. Not the disowned son or the stain on the Sugdens’ good name.

He lived with withering looks and contempt for a chunk of his childhood, and now he had obedience, and order. 

_For good._

*

Robert never wanted to come back. It felt like letting the parts disassemble, like he’d be starting from scratch. Why expose Lawrence and Lachlan to a town that begrudged him, when they already had their doubts? Why play with fire, now, when he truly had Chrissie on side, all his cards finally dealt?

He was playing a good hand – hell, he was _winning_.

Then Aaron showed up.

“Oh, that is _shite_ ,” Aaron says, pulling a face when Robert offers him a taste of his breakfast. The hotel set him back, but apparently good food wasn’t included in the otherwise luxury package. “What is that?”

“It’s a _delicacy_.”

“They boiled it in a shoebox you twat, eurgh,” Aaron rinses it down with his coffee, then scrapes at his tongue with his toast, and Robert laughs. A little, bubble of a thing he tries to hide behind his hand but Aaron sees. Aaron always sees him.

“You headin’ back soon?” he asks, biting at his lip. 

“Might do,” Robert says with a shrug, moving his tray out of the way. “Might do something else, though.”

“What’s that, then?”

Aaron’s the messiest bloke Robert’s ever met. Messy with his work, and his body, messy in his head. He’s a mess of colour, like fireworks, shouting and pushing, _punching_ if given the chance. He was breaking down one day and piling up his walls the next, putting on that brave face and inviting Robert to take him.

He was infuriating.

“Don’t remember this being part of the plan,” Robert grunts, pushed to his elbows and knees, Aaron crowding in behind him. There’s a catch of skin, a pinch, the ruffle of the bed-sheets under Robert’s curling fists. There’s a slick finger inside him, tight, like a punch to the gut and he’s moaning. He can’t help himself.

“Let’s not start planning now, eh? Where’d the fun be in that?”

Aaron pushes the head of his dick in, just, and stills, puts his mouth on Robert’s spine. Robert tries to remember when this was just a little fun. 

*

When Robert stood before Chrissie, her God, and all their family and friends – he promised her. He promised her things he can’t even remember now, but he remembers meaning them, or wanting to mean them. Wanting promises of his own.

(It will stay this way, things won’t change, you won’t want for anything any more, you’ll have, have, have.)

What he does remember is Aaron in the corner of his eye, and the niggling doubt in the back of his mind, and the hate, hating this feeling that he couldn’t break down.

This thing that he couldn’t control.

*

Robert likes to press buttons. He just likes to push, and needle and press down and see what happens next. He likes to pants Andy in front of his friends, and talk down at Katie just to see Chrissie smirk. He likes shaking things up and being a little stupid, because he’s not a nice guy, he doesn’t like nice guys, life’s too short for _nice_.

“So, maybe Vic said some things,” Aaron says in the dark of their room, the light of the TV flickering over his naked body. His scars look black this way, look like slithers, holes, like maybe Robert can get his hand in there, pull him apart. “Things she shouldn’t’ve, you know.”

“About?”

“Uh, Leeds United,” Aaron says with his eyebrows. “What’a’ya think? You.”

“Oh, did she?” Robert hears himself snap, pulled tight like string. “The usual, I suppose, selfish, money-hungry git, the family’s better off without me.” 

He can’t handle the pitying look Aaron gives him, and turns his head away. “Actually, she said you’re alright. That back when you were younger you – you know – had it rough or whatever.”

“She was a kid, what would she know?”

“Small town,” Aaron says with a shrug, pulling the sheet up to his waist like he’s suddenly exposed. “People say things.”

“ _People_?” Robert sits up and crowds over him, suddenly aware of what Aaron isn’t saying. Suddenly a little sick. “You’re fucking with me. Who else have you been talking to?”

“No one! Relax. I just – you know about me, right? I’m just tryin’ to say that I’m here, for ya, if ya want to talk.”

“Talk,” Robert says, huffing, stripping off the sheet because if he wants to lay Robert bare Robert will return the favour. “About what? About my shitty upbringing and terrible life choices, sure, because you don’t have enough of your own.”

“I have room for you,” Aaron says, and he’s looking up at Robert with those dumb eyes, and he’s beautiful, and wasn’t that what got Robert in this mess in the first place? He’s just so – 

“Pathetic,” Robert says, shaking his head, getting out of the bed and creating space. “Just so - ”

“Fuck you, Robert!” Aaron calls behind him, but Robert slams the bathroom door and makes for the shower. To get clean. 

*

Aaron was the first person to label Robert’s sexuality. Or try, at least, gay, bisexual, (wanker). _Does your wife know_ , he asked, as if they had a bowl on the table for everyone’s keys. Robert was – Robert wasn’t anything, until Aaron, because no man was. It was _sex_ , and all the facets of it, knowing, trying, feeling everything, having it all. It was pleasure.

(No strings, no risks.)

If it came out, he’d be Robert Sugden, cheater (what’s new) or Robert Sugden, sexually depraved (he’s heard worse.) He’d be Robert Sugden, and nothing else, nothing but the desperate yearning he couldn’t reign in (and what for?). 

If his dad were here – and around long enough to care – he’d shame him in front of everyone, Robert’s sure. With Andy under his arm and a disgusted, pointed finger he’d say what Robert had always expected to hear back then. What he did hear, in different ways, in the things his father did.

 _You’re no son of mine_.

There might have been a time he’d wished to hear it, and there was never a time he stopped believing. He had plenty of things that were his, that he made his own, but he never belonged to any one, never belonged anywhere. 

He was trying ( _I’m trying, dad, I’m trying_ ).

*

Robert sits back to watch things fall apart around him. Chrissie, Lawrence and Lachlan, and all the fall out. Andy and Katie, and the mess with the farm, and the threadbare remains of their marriage. Vic and Adam, the lout, doing what Robert expected he would but can’t really fault the guy for if he’s honest.

(Aaron, and his silence.)

“Where are you?” Chrissie asks, curled up against Robert’s side, her breast soft and warm against his chest. He can feel her heart beating. 

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“It just feels like you’re not here, with me,” she says, her fingers fluttering around his nipple, so gentle and loving. So _sweet_. “Is it Donny?”

“Oh,” Robert reaches for his phone. Nothing new. “I – yeah, that’s part of it. I don’t like you two being close, if I’m honest.”

“Robert,” Chrissie says with a twinkle of laughter, sitting up to look him in the eye. Her make up is smudged from their love making, her skin red from Robert’s mouth. “Donny means nothing to me, not like that. He’s Lucky’s father, and the only thing standing between me and strangling that boy’s neck. You know that.”  
“Of course, yeah – no, of course.” Robert reaches out to play with her hair. Soft, long, twisting. “I just love you so much, I’m daft.”

“Sweetheart,” she says, and it’s safety, and comfort, and her mouth tastes like him, like them.

There’s no messages.

*

It’s weeks, and some days. A flip-book of time, where everything passes in sketches. Robert watches Aaron run, and lash out, watches him laugh, and turn his back. He watches the way his jaw wrenches when Robert walks into a room. He watches, and watches and watches, and,

“Okay,” he says, cornering Aaron at the scrap-yard and leaving everything he knows by the door. “I’m here.”

“That’s nice. What do I care?”

“No, no _I’m_ here.” Robert says, and he’s jumped now, he doesn’t care any more, he just needs it back. He needs to have. “The kid who grew up down the street and hated his life and made people miserable, _Robert Sugden_ is here.”

Aaron folds his arms and says, “Alright,” like it pains him. “What ‘s he want, then?”

“You. Which – I’m not leaving Chrissie, I wont,” and Robert’s sick of pretending he ever promised otherwise, but he’ll say it again if Aaron needs to hear it. If it works. “But – but I want you, and I – maybe I love ya, okay? Maybe I feel like you know me better than - ”

“’Cause I do, you muppet,” Aaron barks. “I know _this_ , and I know you’re a complete sod who hates everyone and can’t accept that someone might like all of ya, every ugly single piece of ya.”

"Shutup, would ya, I'm trying - "

"No, I won't shut up, you can't shut me up any more, Robert, 'cause you love me and that's what love is you _shit_ that's what - "

Robert crashes him against a wall, crashes their mouths together, just keeps on crashing.

It doesn't hurt.

*

When he was a little boy he made a stupid, little plane fly, and he just kept on soaring above it all. That was his first taste of victory. 

Aaron tastes nothing like that.

He tastes like complete, and utter defeat.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://thefancyspin.tumblr.com)


End file.
